Familiarity breeds contempt, right? So it stands to reason that anyone who uses a product extensively can find fault with it. Owen Linzmayer is no exception: His work requires him to use Mac OS X every day, all day long. Although Owen is generally thrilled with its capabilities and reliability, some things about Mac OS X really drive him up the wall. Take a gander at his list of 10 pet peeves; then share your own!

Familiarity breeds contempt, right? So it stands to reason that anyone who
uses a product extensively can find fault with it. I’m no
exception—my work requires me to use Mac OS X every day, all day long, and
although I am generally thrilled with its capabilities and reliability, some
things about it really drive me up the wall. Take a gander at my list of pet
peeves; then share your own by posting to the
Macintosh Weblog.

1. Dock Items Bounce Indefinitely

Items bounce up and down in the Dock to alert you to situations that supposedly
require your attention. My gripe is that the "problem" is usually
not urgent. The icon bounces indefinitely, like a needy child demanding your
attention, endlessly screaming, "Look at me, Mom, look at me!" This
is so annoying and unnecessary it makes me want to scream back, "Listen
up ya little punk. I hear ya, but I just don’t care, so shut yer trap!"

Here’s the deal. First of all, there’s nothing that can go wrong
in software that requires the immediate intervention of a human, so programs
are never justified in distracting you from the task at hand. If a program
has a problem and needs your attention, it’s OK for its icon to bounce
a few times to visually draw your attention to it. Furthermore, it’s
fine for it to beep or use some other innocuous sound effect to audibly alert
you to something out of the ordinary. But if you haven’t responded after
that, you either chose to ignore the situation or are not around. It would
suffice to have some other static visual change (interpretation: subtle and
nonannoying) to the application’s icon in the Dock, indicating that it
wants your attention when you get around to it.